Black Widow behind Moscow bombing

April 2, 2010 12:00 am

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By , MOSCOW, Apr 2 – Russian investigators have identified one of the female suicide bombers who carried out the Moscow metro bombings as the 17-year-old widow of a Caucasus militant, the Kommersant daily reported Friday.

The bomber was named as Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the 17-year-old widow of a Dagestani Islamist rebel killed in 2009, Umalat Magomedov, Kommersant reported, citing investigators in Dagestan.

The newspaper published a photograph of the baby-faced Abdurakhmanova in an Islamic headscarf with Magomedov. Both are posing casually with pistols.

It was unclear whether the couple were formally married. Magomedov does not wear a ring in the photograph. Kommersant writes that Abdurakhmanova may have another surname, Abdulayev.

Abdurakhmanova comes from the Khasavyurtovsky district of Dagestan and met Magomedov at the age of 16 after she contacted rebels on the Internet, Kommersant reported.

Magomedov was killed in a special operation on December 31, 2009, it said.

Abudurakhmanova has been preliminarily identified from photographs, the newspaper wrote.

Russian investigators believe that Abdurakhmanova was responsible for the first of the double suicide blasts on Monday which together killed 39 people

The bombings sent a chill across Russia, recalling the string of suicide attacks carried out earlier in the decade by the so-called "Black Widows", women were found to have been relatives of men killed by Russian forces.

Investigators have not identified the second bomber, but one version is that she was a Chechen woman called Markha Ustarkhanova who was also married to a Caucasus militant, Kommersant reported.

The Russian authorities have released grisly photographs showing the severed heads of the two women\’s corpses, which are the prime evidence in the police investigation.